By Dorris Fortson

 Growing up as a freckle face, buck tooth kid in an orphanage, I spent a good part of my summers in the cotton fields of southern Oklahoma.  We picked some cotton, but mostly we threw bolls at each other, played hide and seek, chased each other down the rows and  when it came time to weigh in we would slip one of the littlest kids into the bag to weigh with the cotton.  I think we made a penny a pound so it was important that the bag weigh something.  Obviously the scales at the cotton gin never quite matched what they had weighed at the fields!     The math just didn’t add up.

It’s been said a horse can pull six tons of weight, but two horses don’t pull twelve tons, they pull twenty seven tons!  Doesn’t add up, does it.  There is just something about linking up with someone else that blows the math.  We see that best, not in the cotton fields, but in the furrows of our own lives.  It is a long hard pull without a buddy.  A lot of things we do in life are best done alone, blowing your nose for one; but other things seem to add power, gather steam, multiply when we join up with others.  I have heard people say, “I don’t need other people to worship with, I can worship God alone.”  True, but there is something that happens when we worship God together that doesn’t happen when we are alone.  There is a power there, a dynamic that multiplies.  It doesn’t compute, we can’t explain it, we just know it is there. Life is full of tough battles: depression, bitterness, addictions, loneliness, illness, unforgiveness, all battles hard to fight in an army of one.   

Do you ever think of the person sitting next to you at church as an army buddy and “worship” as a weapon?  In a world filled with superstitions, greed, hate, kidnappings of children, terrorism, it’s not global terrorism, it’s global evil.   It’s too much, we can’t fight it.  In II Chronicles chapter 20 a king had a great army marching against him.  That army was so big there was nothing the king could do, he said, “We have no power to face this!”  Have you ever felt that way, faced something so big in your life, you felt helpless, outnumbered?  I certainly have, I think you probably have too.  Life is kind of like that, more than we can handle.  So what did the King do?  He turned his face up to God and sent the choir out first to meet the enemy!  How would you like to be on that praise team!  Scripture reads in II Chronicles 20:22 that when the singers began to praise, the Lord went to work.  When God goes to work, watch out!  Jack Hayford said, "It’s not your saying 'I’ll give it everything I’ve got and the Lord will bless it.' But rather it’s the Lord saying to you, 'You just bless my name and I’ll give it everything I have!'" We may be too little to face some things in life but God is never intimidated by what comes against us!   

Thank God we are not alone in this battle!  The God who sculptured the mountains and painted the rainbows said, “I am with you always, even to the ends of the earth.”  If God is with us it doesn’t matter how many come against us!  So when you feel outnumbered don’t try to count the enemy, God and you don’t make two, you make a “Godzillion!”    Remember, He has an army ready to stand with you and we’ve seen the end of the movie.  We win!                        

Dorris Fortson